The Rule of Building Fronts and Backs

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” – Winston Churchill

How do we go about designing a nurturing built environment - one that makes us feel safe, interested, and connected?

One of the golden rules of urban design – one that has unfortunately been disregarded to grave effect all too often over the last half century – is the rule of building fronts and backs.  

This rule is quite simple:

Buildings have front sides and they have back sides.  A building’s front side should face the public realm; its back side should not. 

Consider that virtually every contributive urban building in the history of city-making adheres to this rule.  (Stand-alone buildings, particularly those in rural settings such as Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, are exempted – we are talking about urban fabric buildings here).  

Where this rule is violated, we usually sense that something is wrong – the environment will often feel incomplete, unengaging, uncared-for, and frequently unsafe.

Jane Jacobs describes the rule of building fronts and backs famously in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “…there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.  The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street.  They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.”

  

Interestingly, groups of buildings in urban settings follow many of the same basic rules of sociability that humans follow when in groups.  Think of a group of people in lively communication – like the group gathered around the dinner table in Norman Rockwell’s famous painting “Freedom from Want”.  The group all faces inward toward one-another.  The space between them, above the dining table, fairly vibrates with conviviality.  Imagine the upset that would occur if one of this dinner party decided to sit with their back to the table.  This would immediately communicate a rude and disturbing detachment, perhaps even disgust with the proceedings.  This closely mimics the damage done to the civility of a public space if a building is designed to not face it properly.

The arrangement of figures in Rockwell's painting above bears a tremendous similarity to the arrangement of the buildings fronting the great public space of the Piazza San Marco in Venice as depicted in the 1720 painting by Canaletto below:

So - what do we mean by a building front, and by a building back?  This was self-evident in earlier times, and it is really quite simple:

1. A building front is the building’s presentation face.  It contains the front door and it has a high degree of window area to provide permeability.  Door and window openings allow the building to communicate with the space in front of it, much like the eyes and mouth on the front of a person’s head.  Expanses of blank wall must be avoided at all costs on a building’s front, as this is as off-putting as it would be to attempt to communicate with a person with no facial features or expressions.

2. A building back contains service functions which do not belong on the presentation face, such as loading docks, dumpster enclosures, and parking lots.  Permeability is much less critical on a building’s back side.  The back of the building is also the private side, and may feature enclosed private outdoor open space.  Exposing a building’s back elements to the public realm is a bit like turning the wrong way in public while wearing a hospital gown open in the back – rear exposure of private areas can be quite awkward! 

When building fronts and backs are confused:

All too often today, designers have unfortunately become accustomed to designing structures floating randomly on their sites.  The grammar of fronts and backs often becomes so confused that no side is a true presentation face.  For example, we have all seen buildings wrecked by ground floor loading docks abutting the sidewalk.

Another common error made all too often nowadays is backing buildings up to large streets.  This unfortunate configuration is commonly seen along arterial and collector roadways on the edges of suburban housing subdivisions.  When large streets are assumed to be poor addresses and are instead faced with the backs of buildings, a self-fulfilling prophesy is initiated – backing buildings up to a street guarantees a bleak and pedestrian-repellent public space.

Designing for an optimal fronts-backs arrangement:

The rule of building fronts and backs goes hand in hand with the discipline of proper block design.  When a pattern of blocks is set up with fronts and backs in mind, buildings can be oriented properly with very little effort.  Blocks should be configured so that the fronts of lots face outwards toward the street, and the backs of lots are grouped toward the middle of the block.  When multiple blocks designed this way are combined to form a neighborhood, building fronts and backs are much easier to organize, and will add up to form convivial, well-shaped, well-fronted public spaces.

    

Amazon: The Death and Life of Great American Cities (by Jane Jacobs)